website: how a public radio broadcaster makes

immersive audio accessible to the general public

HERVE DEJARDIN, EDWIGE RONCIERE

Direction de la Production et des Antennes (DPA) / RADIO FRANCE, Paris, France

herve.dejardin@radiofrance.com
edwige.ronciere@radiofrance.com

SUMMARY

In March 2013, Radio France launched a new part of its website, called nouvOson (1), to broadcast
5.1 and binaural sound. A binaural technique was initially chosen to reach people who do not have a
home theatre set for 5.1 productions as well as for mobile applications.
At the same time, Radio France became a founding member of the collaborative
research project in binaural listening BILI (2), whose aim is to find a accessible way to
personalize HRTF (Head-related Transfer Function) for the general public.
This paper discusses the progress of the nouvOson player project since 2013 and its outlook.

INITIAL ARCHITECTURE

98% of the sound on nouvOson is created by encoding a 5.1 sound file with generic HRTF. On the
player, when he wants to listen to a program, the listener can choose between 5.1 or binaural
rendering.

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Based on the expertise of Francois Ragenard, Radio France technical supervisor, the codecs used are
Fraunhofer MPEG HE AAC at 192 kb/s for 5.1 audio files and AAC 192 kb/s for binaural files. Both are
at constant bit rates.

For the moment, nouvOson broadcasts 5.1 audio files only on podcast. However, it sometimes offers
live events on binaural, such as the French national holiday this summer.

The level of the audio files is EBU R128 compliant (3):

- the 5.1 files, which are meant to be listened to in a quiet home theater environment, are set
to – 23 LUFS;
- The binaural files are set to -15 LUFS to fit in with mobile practices.

Two points are important in this configuration:

- For one program, Radio France has to produce two audio files: one in 5.1 and another
encoded in binaural;
- generic HRTF was a good way to launch the player. However, it is not sufficient to provide an
excellent spatial experience for everyone.

INTRODUCTION OF THE WEB AUDIO API IN NOUVOSON

The WebAudioAPI (4) allows amplifying, filtering, routing and convoling. Using these tools, Marc
Emerit and Michael Pontiggia from OrangeLabs have constructed a binaural engine that Radio France
is now introducing in its nouvOson player.

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With this process, it is only necessary to produce a 5.1 audio file. The binaural file will be created in
the listener set from the HTML5. The first prototype was austere and has been used for internal
trials.

Once the quality assessment was approved, a better integration was launched, thanks to Julien
Decaudin and Guillaume Baret from Radio France.
If the listener does not select the sound, the WebAudio API can automatically detect if he is listening
in 5.1 or binaural. In the binaural case, a generic HRTF is automatically applied.

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In the case of 5.1 rendering, the listener can check his home set by switching on and off the speakers.

If needed, there is a classical stereo downmix available:

Left downmix= L + C-3dB + Ls-3dB
Right downmix=R + C-3dB + Rs-3dB

The LFE is apart and the listener can apply +10dB by himself on this channel in his home theater.

LEVEL MANAGEMENT IN THE WEB AUDIO API

The level is now -23 LUFS for both 5.1 and binaural. Additionally, a smart AGC on the bar in the
middle of the screen is introduced inside the WebAudioAPI. The mark between the white and the red
zone indicates -23LUFS. The listener can push down the cursor in the white zone. He can also push it
in the red zone until it reaches –15 LUFS. In order to stay EBU R128 compliant in mobility, the AGC
follows the signal peaks on every sample and acts to remain under -3dB peak (true peak is not yet
available).
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EVOLUTION OF THE WEB AUDIO API FOR THE BINAURAL
If the listener wishes to improve and personalize his binaural rendering, he can perform a short
localization test:

The sound of this test is a rhythmic sample of an African percussion instrument that turns around the
head for about five seconds. Hervé Dejardin, who designed this test, had previously conducted trials
here.
He found that the sound must fill a wide spectrum in order to stimulate both ITD (Interaural Time
Difference) under 2.5 kHz and ILD (Interaural Level Difference) above 2.5 kHz.
On the advice of Rozenn Nicol from OrangeLabs, he added some artificial reverberation, which gives
depth and more medium spectrum components to improve the test.
The choice of a continuous moving source instead of several discreet fixed audio points in the same
space compensates for the absence of headtracking.

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The speed of movement of the sound is also very important, since it must agree with virtualization of
only five speakers.

On the upper side of the test screen, the blue circle shows the good binaural rendering of the test.
The red and orange ones indicate false HRTF situations to help the listener understanding what he
has to assess.

Under these circles, the lower side of the picture is divided in three parts:
- on the left side, the listener can switch on and off the five virtual speakers symbolized by
arrows.
- in the middle, he can choose between seven HRTF, called morphologic profiles. These seven
HRTF have been selected by Brian Katz and Gaëtan Parseihian(5) from the IRCAM HRTF
database (6).
- on the right side, the listener can adapt the ITD of his chosen HRTF, as if the size of his head
had been measured.
More explanations are available on the help buttons to settle the ITD, with the accuracy of the
movement velocity of the sound on the sides.

However, even though sound engineers can understand and hear this, it is not sure that general
public will be able to do so with the same ease.

After the test, the listener saves his own adapted profile so he can use it every time he visits
nouvOson.

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OUTLOOK
Several subjects are currently being considered:

- The listeners’ choice for HRTF on the Radio France NouvOson website will be analyzed by
Brian Katz from CNRS LIMSI (Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique Laboratoire
d'Informatique pour la Mécanique et les Sciences de l'Ingénieur), a member of the BILI
project (2). As such, Brian will be able to continue and complete the previously cited study
(5).

- The LFE rendering in the binaural case is achieved by adding +10dB in the WebAudioAPI. The
80 Hz low pass filtering is inside the MPEG HE AAC encoder.
Its convolver is still under construction.

- Streaming live on nouvOson is not yet easy in 5.1. We only know how to stream codecs in
the 4.0 format. This is a good format for radio broadcasting, without any picture, especially
for fixed sources. When sources move, we need more channels to follow them precisely and
continuously.

The gap between 5.1 and the ability to manage many virtual sources in binaural as well as the need
for more virtual channels than the classical 5.1 have led us to object- oriented mixing and new ways
of producing audio. The WebAudio API will be a good tool to manage all these future applications.

REFERENCES
(1) http://nouvoson.radiofrance.fr/
(2) http://www.bili-project.org/
(3) https://tech.ebu.ch/loudness
(4) http://webaudio.github.io/web-audio-api/
(5) http://perso.limsi.fr/katz/Katz_publist_web.html:   B.   Katz   and   G.   Parseihian,   “Perceptually  
based head-related   transfer   function   database   optimization,”   J.   Acoust.   Soc.   Am.,   vol.   131,  
no. 2, pp. EL99–EL105, 2012, (doi:10.1121/1.3672641)

(6) http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/salles/listen/download.html